Sharing My 2012 Word(s)

My word has become three words.

1. Adjective – OPEN
2. Verb – DANCE
3. Noun – CHANNEL

Let me explain…

OPEN

Over the last few months I have spent many hours knitting. The yarn has looped around my needles, becoming intertwined, forming itself into fabric which consists of the repeating patterns of yarn and open space. I have become fascinated by these open spaces. The fact that they are both present within the fabric, and yet they are only present through an absence.

It was while I was becoming increasingly entranced by the spaces created by the knitting process, that I came across the most wonderful passage in Susan Gordon Lydon’s The Knitting Sutra (Thank you Sara Blackthorne for sending this to me – it has changed the way I think about my hands and my spirit forever):

There is another, unseen dimension to the making of objects, and its mystical importance stems directly and precisely from its absence. The tai chi teacher, a character in Lynne Sharon Shwartz’s novel The Fatigue Artist, speaks eloquently to this subject:

“Chinese art did make beautiful things, poems, paintings, pottery, all with a great deal of empty space. The empty space represents the inner life, what is most important but unseen. Like the breath, which is invisible but sustains us… The space in a bowl, for example… You use the clay to make it, and that is the part you see, but what makes the bowl useful is the space within.” ~ The Knitting Sutra, p.103

When I use this way of thinking about space to approach why the soulskins I create are so important, I see that the yarn allows me to create a framework: a structure which permits the divine to flow through. My love, my energy, my essence is given a vehicle through the fabric I weave with my knitting needles.

Upon this realization, I then applied this way of thinking to my writing. As you all know, over this year, I have been writing goddess stories. The process of writing these stories is really quite mystical. More often than not, I’ll sit down at the keyboard, and I feel as though the goddess whose story I am sharing, steps forward to speak through the tapping of my fingertips on the keys.

As the 2011 continued, I became fixated on the words themselves. I was convinced that it was the words that were important. The voice of the goddess was being translated here in this collection of syllables I had selected. It was only when I got to Hecate’s Story that I realized the importance of the silence – of the spaces between the words, the pauses that prevented syllable from colliding with syllable.

Generally, the goddesses do not play hide and seek with me. They want you to hear their stories. They want to speak their truths. And yet, Hecate was different. I could see her dancing in and out of my peripheral vision, but she refused to step forward and be seen. She stayed silent.

The deadline for delivering Hecate’s Story to my Bloom by Moon ladies was coming close, and I will admit that I began to panic. I started second-guessing myself, and my choice of Hecate as my final goddess. The evening before the deadline, I was sitting looking at the blinking cursor. It was after 10pm and I was getting reading to give up. I had decided that I was going to email everyone and tell them there was a delay on the story. It wouldn’t be arriving in the morning, as expected.

And then she spoke. Just two words, at first. “A poem.”

Cue a maelstrom of self-deprecation. A poem!? I can’t share a poem as a goddess story!! I’m not even a particularly good poet. Dramatic sigh and rolling of eye followed. And I stayed sitting looking at the screen, until I surrendered.

Hecate’s Story spun out from my fingertips in the form of a poem in twenty minutes flat. And this was the opening stanza:

The clouds swirl around the moon;
Hecate’s night sky skirts
waltz through the frosted air,
kicking up the last leaves
that scuttle and skitter along gutters.
Absent since time immemorial –
a negative presence that dances
in between the spaces
of now and then and soon –
she shimmers in and out of shadow.

Here was Hecate – at last! And yet, I acknowledged to myself, she wasn’t in the words themselves. The words were mine. My words were like the yarn – they created open spaces for the goddess to flow through.

DANCE

On Christmas Day I watched two programmes about dance. The first was Matthew Bourne’s Christmas, while the second was Akram Khan’s Homeland. For two hours I was completely transfixed to the screen as I watched bodies language the most complex of narratives without the use of words. I was so moved. My heart so full of a longing that I never knew existed. Or even if I did know it existed, I’d done a damn good job of pretending it wasn’t there.

I used to dance in clubs all the time. 5 nights out of 7 you would find me on the dancefloor. And I was a good dancer. I would give my body over to the music completely, my self-consciousness left behind. I do still dance – at ceilidhs mostly. Scottish country dancing at weddings and birthdays and conferences. And I occasionally dance at some of our goddess playshops. I love the feeling of grace as it moves through me.

I find it difficult to express just how much this means to me, and how much I’ve repressed it.

Dance for me means a freedom of movement and an expressiveness of the body. I want to explore this over the next year and see where it takes me. It’s calling to me.

CHANNEL

I’ve been thinking a lot about this word. It’s never been one I’ve felt all that comfortable with, if I’m honest. Which is maybe why I’ve chosen it!

When you discuss intuitive work, like my goddess guidance, for example, you inevitably come across the concept of channelling: the providing of a vehicle through which a disembodied voice may speak through.

It comes up again when discussing certain kinds of writing, and I have come to believe that the goddess stories that I write, in particular, are channelled in some way. My body, my consciousness being put to use so that the goddesses can share through me.

But, it was only when I wrote this piece for a moon guide, that I started to find some peace around this concept.

The boy trudges homewards through the cold, early evening mist that hovers around the lake edge. His hands, both thrust deep in his pockets, are ruddy red from the cold, and he curses softly beneath his breath, chastising himself for the loss of his gloves.

Despite the cold, he appears unhurried, almost as though he had no wish to return to the warmth of his home. One hand frees itself from the confines of his pocket and plucks at one of the tall reeds that is growing tall from the marshy lakeside. Carefully folding the reed with numb fingers, he brings the makeshift instrument to his mouth, purses his lips and breathes hot breath against the leaf.

A high, scratchy whistle cuts through the almost preternatural quiet startling a small family of ducks which, beak beneath wing, had begun their night-time roost.

The boy laughs, a noise almost as shocking as the whistle, disturbing the evening calm and filling his heart with tiny bubbles of joy. He laughs again, before bringing the reed back to his mouth and blowing a second time.

We are all the leaf that boy plays music through. We are the vehicles through which the divine becomes expressed – our bodies, our consciousness, our experiences, our gifts each colouring that expression with unique presence. We are sacred instruments.

WHERE NOW?

Whenever you choose a word or a collection of words as I have done here, you never truly know how they will present for you throughout the coming year. That’s where the mystery lies. I can only hold them lightly in my heart, and let them play throughout the moments as they collect to form hours, days, months… a year.

I will make visionboards for each of the words. I will journal around their meanings as they shift in and out of focus. I will take the opportunities they guide me towards. I will play fast and loose. I will play slow and languid. I will breathe in their lessons and exhale my resistance. I will surrender to the journey they are taking me on.

OPEN. DANCE. CHANNEL.

 PS If you haven’t yet chosen your word, and you would like a little direction from the goddess, check out the 2012 My Word Goddess Readings – they may be just what you need, and at only £10 they’re a real bargain. Only available till the 31st Dec!